


Not Broken at All

by donteattheappleshook



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Discord: Captain Swan Neverland New Year, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28859634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donteattheappleshook/pseuds/donteattheappleshook
Summary: Season 1 Neverland AU.Emma is still trying to adjust to her new life as Sheriff of Storybrooke and mom to Henry, who still believes everyone in town is a fairytale creature. When she finds a badly beaten, one handed man while patrolling, she's convinced he's crazy. he is, after all, rambling about fairies and shadows and crocodiles. But when Henry is suddenly taken by what Emma swears (but can't believe) was a shadow, the madman in the hospital might be her only hope of getting her son back. Whether he likes it or not.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59
Collections: CS Neverland New Year





	Not Broken at All

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you @hollyeleigh for looking this over and brainstorming with me, and @xhookswenchx for feedback :)

“ _ I never expected that  _ _ you could have a broken heart _ _ and love with it too, so much that it does not seem broken at all.”  _ _ \- J.M.Barrie, Peter Pan _

Part One, Prologue

Graham is dead. It still doesn’t feel real. She keeps having to remind herself. Every time she looks over at his booth in Granny’s, everytime she comes into the station, everytime she steps into the Sheriff's office -  _ her office _ , she reminds herself - every time her fingers find their way to the boot laces wound around her wrist, or brush absentmindedly against her lips… Graham is dead. And now she’s somehow found herself playing sheriff in this tiny town she’d only ever intended to spend one night in. 

She sighs, sitting back in her chair and setting down the paperwork she’d been looking over, too distracted now to concentrate. Her days have been getting longer and longer. Nothing happens in this town. Nothing apart from a couple of guys indulging a little too much at the Rabbit Hole and having to spend a night in the drunk tank. She smiles.  _ Dwarves _ , Henry would insist. Leroy is short but she doesn’t know if she’d give him dwarf status. 

She’s still musing when the phone rings. She groans.  _ Come on _ , it’s nearly 9 pm. She’s nearly done for the night. She was  _ this  _ close to being able to forward emergency-only calls to her cellphone and go back to Mary Margaret’s place to hear the latest development in her very straightlaced friend’s not so straightlaced relationship with a certain former coma patient. 

“Sheriff's station.” 

“Miss Swan.” She wants to groan again. Of course it would be Regina. She must have known that this would ruin Emma’s evening.

“How can I help you, Madam, Mayor?” she manages to bite out through gritted teeth. 

“Some of the local teenagers have broken into the Lovell house again. I can hear the awful music from my office. Frankly, I’m surprised you can’t hear it from the station. Or perhaps you’ve just decided not to do anything about it. It would make sense given your history of teenage malfeasance.” Emma sighs into the phone again. “Well?” Regina demands.

“Oh, are you done talking? I can never tell,” Emma snarks. She can picture the woman seething on the other end of the line. 

“Are you going to do something about it or not?” she snaps.

“Yes. I’ll go break up the party.”

“I should hope so. The youth in this town are getting out of control. They need a firm hand and if you -”

“You didn’t get invited to many parties in high school, did you?” she asks, smiling smugly to herself at the sudden silence on the other end. 

“Goodnight, Miss Swan. I trust you’ll do your job.”

“Of course I will. The town elected me, didn’t they?” Emma reminds her, unable to help herself from getting the last word. 

The line goes dead. Emma rolls her eyes, then laughs, then grabs the keys to the patrol car off the desk and throws her jacket on. Stupid teenagers. Who goes to a party on a school night?

_ You did _ .

Ah, right. 

She pulls up beside the abandoned Lovell house, its tall, Victorian architecture looming over the rest of the street, several stories higher than any other home nearby. It looks so out of place, like it was picked out of the heart of London or some gothic novel and plopped right on the corner of Main street, just a block away from the pawn shop.  _ Careful now, _ she warns herself.  _ You’re starting to sound like Henry. _

She can hear the music pounding through the walls as she turns the engine off. She checks her watch. It’s not that late, honestly Regina didn’t really have a case to call in a noise complaint before 11pm when the curfew starts. She feels bad for the kids. They’re just trying to have a bit of fun in this sleepy town. Pretty soon it’ll be Henry sneaking out to these parties - at least she hopes he sneaks out to parties, hopes that Regina doesn’t keep him under lock and key. She decides to cut them a break.

Turning on her siren, she steps out of the car to lean against the side of it, stifling a laugh at the “ _ Oh shit, it’s the cops _ !” she can hear from inside, the music being cut off as kids scramble to get out. She watches them run out the side windows and doors, making a break for it down the road. Emma leaves them be. They’ll be going home now. No harm no foul. 

But, she does have to do a sweep. If only because Regina will demand to know if she did one. And, on the off chance that some poor kid had a little bit too much of whatever they swiped from their parents’ liquor cabinet and passed out somewhere. So she grabs her flashlight from inside and heads on in. 

“Alright, party’s over,” she calls into the dark, empty room. God, this place gives her the creeps. It’s straight out of every horror movie she’s ever seen and every ghost story she’s ever heard. While the outside is still somewhat held together - apart from a few broken windows or shutters - the inside is all chipped paint and cobwebs, old, Victorian-style paintings of long-dead family members and serious looking children lining the walls. She can’t wait to get out of here. “Time to go home,” she warns whoever might be hiding. 

It takes nearly a half hour for her to check all the rooms on the main floor, there are so many of them - but there are no kids to be found. She sighs, looking up at the rickety staircase, really just wanting to go home and curl up with some spiked cocoa. But she signed up for this job, including the crappy bits. 

She steps onto the first stair and screams as her foot goes right through as she puts her weight on it. Once she’s caught her breath, she tries the next one, more carefully this time. It breaks under her weight as well. She’s never been up there, and from the look of the staircase she thinks maybe nobody else has either, not in a long time. She doesn’t think she weighs much more than the average teenager, especially not the boys she’s used to giving warnings to, the ones who would go up there just to prove how tough they are or impress a girl. 

Emma decides that she’s done all she can, has cleared the place to the best of her abilities without putting her own safety seriously at risk. Maybe she should look into having this building condemned or torn down, or at least made safer so some poor teenager doesn’t break their leg or their neck. She wonders how hard Regina would fight her on each of these options. 

On her way out she takes one last look at the large painting over the mantle, a chill running down her spine. The painting shows a family, a father, a mother, a daughter and two young boys. These five aren’t quite as stone-faced and dead-eyed as the others around the room - except maybe the father who looks every inch the serious, aristocratic patriarch. 

The woman though has a soft sort of almost smile turning up one corner of her mouth, a kind expression that reminds her of Mary Margaret, of someone who couldn’t be cruel if they wanted to. The girl at her side is a smaller replica of the mother, bright eyed and restless looking, even in a painting. She’s young, but not that young, somewhere on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. 

The two boys look horribly uncomfortable in their stiff clothing. One, about Henry’s age, is trying his best to imitate the expression his father wears, while the other looks absentmindedly at something out of the frame. He can’t be more than five and wears what she’d swear is a dress. 

She looks at the painting for longer than she’d like. They look  _ happy _ . Even in their awkwardness and discomfort (and eeriness) they look happy, and she wonders what happened to them, if they were the last to live here. When she first arrived she’d asked about the house but nobody had really known the story of its last tennants. Everything she heard was ghost stories or local legends that had been grossly exaggerated and made the house the late-night delinquent destination it was. 

But, despite whatever it was that happened, in this moment, the one captured here on the canvas, she  _ envies  _ them. Shaking her head, she tries to pull herself from her melancholy. She has Henry now, and Mary Margaret. That’s the only family she needs. She gave up looking for anyone else a long time ago. 

She heads back outside, glad to be out of the unsettling house and on the quiet, familiar streets of Storybrooke. She’s nearly made it to her car when she hears something. It’s quiet, so quiet she’s not sure she even heard it at all, wondering if it was the wind or the house creaking or her ears playing tricks on her. 

But then she hears it again. It’s unmistakable this time. A groan. Weak and pained like someone struggling to breathe, unable to call out for help. She lifts her flashlight, scanning the outside of the house, worried some poor kid is hurt or sick with alcohol poisoning. 

The sound is coming from somewhere around the back, somewhere in the small alley that runs behind it, between the house and the high school. She hears it again, this time it’s followed by laboured breathing, breathing that’s getting shallower and shallower even as she rushes over. 

Flashlight raised, she rounds the corner, startling, free hand settling on the gun at her hip when she sees that whoever this is, they’re not a teenager. There’s a man laying in the alleyway. At first she wonders if he’s drunk, if he passed out while taking a piss. But then she notices the awkward way he lays, the raspiness of his breath, the wheezing. He lays in a puddle and it’s only when she shines the light directly on him that she sees the blood in the water. Fuck. There’s so much blood. 

She rushes to the man’s side, already pulling out her cell phone to call an ambulance. She kneels beside him, setting the phone on the ground as it connects to the hospital. She barks commands at the woman who answers, telling them where they are as she reaches out to check the man’s injuries. 

She frowns as she takes him in. He’s wearing a heavy leather jacket, one so long it falls over his ankles as he lays on his stomach in the puddle, face way too close to the water. She tries to remember the first aid training she took years ago. 

“Hey, can you hear me?” she asks, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You’re gonna be okay,” Emma insists. “I’m gonna turn you over okay?” She uses all her strength to roll him onto his side and gasps when she sees his face darkened with blood from a gash over his eye, another along his cheek. His nose might be broken. 

He cries out as she moves him but his eyes also snap open and she takes that as a good sign. At least he’s awake, at least he’s alive. She can see the fear flash across his face, the panic and his meager attempt to push her away but he lets out another horrible, pained cry, hand falling limply to his side.

“Hey, it’s okay. My name’s Emma; I’m the sheriff here. I’m gonna get you some help. You’re gonna be alright,” she promises. She runs her hands gingerly over his head, neck, shoulders and arms, checking him for more injuries though it’s hard to feel through his coat. At first he tries to squirm away but eventually relaxes against her touch, or gives up. 

She presses gingerly at his ribs and he lets out a brutal, primal sort of groan that turns into a soft sob. “I think your ribs are broken,” she tells him. “Try not to move.” She continues her assessment, checking his legs and his other side, being careful to avoid his ribs this time. When she reaches his left arm she gasps, fingers shaking. He’s missing a hand. “Who did this to you?” she asks, softly, her voice thick and choked with tears. 

He doesn’t say anything at first and she worries that he’s passed out again. But when she looks at his face there’s something far away in his gaze, something sad and ancient, his brow pulled down in something more than pain. When he finally speaks she barely hears him over the sound of the approaching siren.

“ _ Crocodile _ .”


End file.
